Totally Spellbound

by Kristine Grayson

“I’m sorry,” he said as if he’d repeated it more than once. “But the kid has disappeared.”

  Kid? What was a man, wearing a uniform and holding a tray, doing in her bedroom? And what did he mean by kid?

  Megan blinked again, started to roll over, and realized she wasn’t in her room at all. She was in a hotel room, in a suite to be exact, a suite Travers had voluntarily and shockingly paid for to be even more exact, and she was sleeping on the couch.

  Her neck ached, her shirt had bunched up over her stomach (which the kid with the tray was trying hard not to look at), and the waistband of her jeans dug into her left side.

  Travers should have come back by now. He should have awakened her much earlier.

  And who was this man with the patience of Job?

  “Ma’am, I’m really sorry. But the tray? And I need you to sign for this.”

  Sign for. Tray. Bacon, eggs, waffles, coffee. Room service. Boy, her mind was working slowly.

  “Um.” Her mouth tasted like it was full of wet cotton. “On the table?”

  The man nodded, gave her a polite smile, and executed a military turn. He walked into the dining area and set the tray on the table. Then he took the dishes off as if he were a real waiter.

  Megan stood, pulled down her shirt, ran her fingers through her hair (not that it would do any good), and then stuck a thumb between her waistband and her side, trying to get the fabric out of her skin. It sort of worked, enough so that she was no longer in pain.

  The man finished removing the dishes, then he brought a computer slip to her, along with a pen.

  “How did you get in here, exactly?” Megan asked, feeling as if he had seen her naked.

  She never let anyone watch her sleep, and this guy could’ve been standing there for days.

  “The kid let me in,” he said.

  “Kyle?”

  “I dunno. He opened the door, pointed to the living room, and said you’d handle it.”

  Because he couldn’t sign for the food. Megan scrawled her name, checked to see if there was a tip, then added one anyway, and handed the paper back to the room service guy.

  “Thanks,” he said with a little too much sarcasm. How long had he been trying to wake her up?

  He grabbed his tray and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Apparently he had wanted out of the room badly.

  Megan sighed and scouted the area for Kyle. She didn’t see him, but she heard a shower running somewhere nearby. She headed toward his room.

  No boy, no dog.

  No kid in the shower.

  A shiver ran through her. How could she have lost Kyle?

  At that moment the front door opened.

  “Hey, you’re awake!” Kyle said. He had the dog on a leash. The dog lifted its long snout and sniffed the air, then pointed directly at the food.

  Megan had no idea that dachshunds were pointers.

  “They’re not,” Kyle said. “They just really like sausage.”

  She also had no idea she had spoken out loud.

  “You’re not,” Kyle said, “but you’re broadcasting.”

  This time, she did speak out loud. “Broadcasting?”

  “Thinking really loud. Some people do that when they just wake up. It only happens to people who wake up really slow.”

  Like she did. Staring at a man in uniform—every woman’s dream, Conchita would say. A good-looking (albeit much too young) man, bearing food.

  “Can you think about something else?” Kyle’s cheeks were red.

  Megan blushed. If he could hear that, what else had he heard over the years? Was that why he was so precocious? Because he knew about—

  “Aunt Megan, please. Stop.”

  Apparently he did.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Kyle, why didn’t you tell me before last night?”

  “I did,” he said miserably. “I told you and Dad and Gramma and none of you believed me.”

  But he had never told Vivian, who had always claimed she had visions. Vivian would have at least understood. Or pretended she did.

  “I tried to tell Aunt Viv too. She just thought I was making stuff up.”

  Megan looked at her nephew with a combination of horror and sympathy. Sympathy because she hated being misunderstood, and horror because he had heard things no child should hear.

  “Kyle, baby, how long has this been going on?”

  He shrugged.

  “How long, really?”

  He shrugged again. The dog tugged on the leash so hard that it nearly pulled him forward. He crouched and released it. The dog made a beeline for the table, looking like a heat-seeking missile with a tail.

  “Crap,” Megan said, and launched herself after the heat-seeking missile, hoping she’d arrive before all the sausages were gone.

  She wrapped an arm around the dog’s stomach—which, despite its size, was surprisingly solid—and held the creature against her as she turned toward Kyle.

  “What do we do with it now?” she asked.

  He was watching with an expression of bemusement on his face. And then she realized that he had probably let the dog loose on purpose, just so that he could avoid her question.

  “Kyle,” she said as softly as she could. “How long have you been able to hear other people’s thoughts?”

  He shrugged for a third time.

  The dog kicked her in the back, its sharp claws digging through her shirt. Still, she hung on to the creature, not willing to sacrifice her breakfast to something that resembled a sausage itself.

  “Tell me what to do with the dog,” she said.

  “Put him down,” Kyle said. “He knows better.”

  She bent over, set the dog down, and the creature took off again, only this time it ran to Kyle. Kyle crouched, hands out, and let the dog lick his face.

  Kyle looked like he needed the comfort.

  Had the dog known that?

  Kyle nodded, just a little, and Megan wondered if he was answering her thoughts or if he was just enjoying the dog.

  “Kyle,” she said, not believing she was asking the question. “How do I stop broadcasting?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Stop concentrating, I guess. I dunno.”

  She took a deep breath, followed by another, focusing on her breathing. She had been trained to do this as a therapist. Calm your thoughts. Calm your mind. Relax.

  And her thoughts did quiet.

  Except for one, really tiny, niggly idea.

  Kyle had been hearing other people’s thoughts since he was born. That’s why he couldn’t tell her how long he’d been psychic. He always had been.

  Kyle had his face buried in the dog’s fur. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he looked really sad.

  Megan walked toward him and put a hand on his arm, helping him up. He stared at her—clearly expecting rejection, because she had done it so many times before (how could she believe in mind-reading? She’d been taught it didn’t exist. Even though it had been so damn obvious. He always knew what people were going to say a half second before they said it, and she always said he was the most intuitive kid [maybe the most intuitive person] she had ever known).

  “C’mere,” she said, and enveloped him in a hug.

  For a moment he didn’t respond, then he wrapped his arms around her as if she were a lifeline. She wrapped her arms around him, too. God, she loved this kid, and she hoped she was broadcasting that.

  “You were,” he whispered into her side.

  “I do love you, kiddo. You’re the most important person in my life.”

  “I know,” Kyle said. “I’m really lucky. I got you and Dad and Aunt Viv, and Gramma and Grandpa and Bartholomew Fang, and the Fates. And you all think I’m okay.”

  But he didn’t name any friends from school. No one outside his family, except the three strangest women Megan had ever met in her life.

  “They’re not strange,” Kyle said. “I mean, they are strange, but they’re not really strange if you know what they’ve bee
n through. Like they gave up magic to learn what life is really like, and they’ve had magic since forever, and they even bossed the gods around, although that didn’t pay off for them, not really, and—”

  “We talked about some of this last night.” Megan’s stomach growled. “How about talking some more over breakfast, before it gets cold?”

  “Okay.” Kyle eased out of her hug. He looked toward the table and blanched. “Fang!”

  The dog was in the center of the table, munching at one of the plates as if it had been placed there for him.

  Megan looked at Kyle who looked back at her. It felt like a Laurel and Hardy moment—if either of them moved, something would go wrong: the dog would run into the other plates, or it would pull the tablecloth off the table, or it would throw up all over the waffles.

  “Dad would get mad and throw everything out,” Kyle said.

  “Your dad’s right,” Megan said, “but I’m hungry.”

  She led Kyle to the table. The dog kept eating, his stubby tail wagging. He had started with the sausages, and they were mostly gone now, but the bacon remained, along with the waffles and the eggs and some lovely looking pastries.

  Kyle picked up the dog just like Megan had, wrapping his arm around the dog’s stomach, and then grabbed the plate. He set dog and plate on the floor, and then sat at the table.

  Megan joined him and grinned.

  Kyle giggled.

  Megan giggled, too, and then they laughed as if this were the funniest thing that had ever happened to them. It wasn’t, but it certainly showed Megan how tense she had been during the last twenty-four hours.

  “Imagine if your Dad had walked in on that,” Megan said.

  “He’d’ve been really mad,” Kyle said.

  “He’d’ve made some comment about how non-parents don’t understand the needs of children—”

  “And he would have been right.”

  Megan jumped at the new voice. It belonged to Travers. He was standing at the door, a beautiful raven-haired woman at his side.

  Megan felt a surge of anger. It wasn’t Travers’ comment so much as the fact that he had abandoned his child for an entire night to three obviously incompetent women, not knowing for sure when Megan would arrive.

  And it was clear what he had been doing. Her tall, slender, handsome brother looked like he’d been kissed. Many times. His mouth was swollen, his eyes a bit glassy, his blond hair mussed.

  He looked…ruffled. She’d never seen him look ruffled, not even with Kyle’s mother, way back when Travers was a teenager.

  “I know about kids, Travers,” Megan snapped. “I specialize in kids.”

  “You specialize in kid theory. You should know better than to eat food that a dog has touched.”

  The raven-haired woman put a manicured hand on his arm. She looked well kissed, too, and Megan didn’t even know her. The woman was petite and stylish—black clothes that would’ve been too tight on anyone with an ounce of fat, a wedge cut hairdo that would have ruined any face except one with wonderful angles, and boots, high-heeled boots that looked like they had come off a movie set.

  Megan hated women like that.

  “Give her a chance,” Kyle whispered, which told Megan she’d been broadcasting again.

  She hated the broadcasting thing, too.

  “You should know better than to leave your son alone with three insane women,” she said

  “Oh,” Travers said, shutting the front door and coming into the suite. “You’ve met the Fates.”

  “You call them the Fates, too?”

  He nodded. He had lipstick on his chin. She hadn’t noticed that before. And some mud—at least she hoped it was mud—on the front of his shirt.

  She had never seen Travers look like this.

  “They are the Fates,” Travers said. “They deserve the name.”

  “What is this all about?” Megan said. “Is this an elaborate practical joke? Let’s see how thoroughly we can humiliate Megan? Is that what we’re doing?”

  “No.” The woman spoke. She had a faint accent—French?—and her voice was as sophisticated as the rest of her.

  She came all the way into the dining room and extended that manicured hand toward Megan.

  “I’m Zoe,” she said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  Megan felt a momentary sullenness. She didn’t want to take this woman’s hand. But that would be rude, and Megan was never (well, not never as she had recently learned, but rarely) rude.

  Megan took her hand. It was smooth and warm. “Megan.”

  “Travers says nice things about you,” Zoe said. “He’s a bit off balance right now.”

  “He’s been off balance for days,” Kyle said.

  “I have not,” Travers said.

  “Have too,” Kyle said.

  “Have not,” Travers said.

  “Have too.” Kyle crossed his arms.

  “Have not.”

  Megan stared at her brother. He always told her that adults who interacted childishly with their children hurt their children. She had never heard this kind of interchange between Travers and Kyle.

  “Have too,” Kyle said.

  Megan was feeling off balance as well.

  “This,” Zoe said loudly, obviously to stop the fight, “is not a practical joke. There are just things about the world that your family didn’t know. And now you’re learning them, which can be hard.”

  Hard. That was the understatement of the year. If magic existed and Zoe was a witch (magician?) and Kyle had psychic powers and the Fates had once been in charge of everyone’s lives, then hard was nearly impossible.

  Because it meant everything Megan had learned was wrong.

  Zoe was watching her sympathetically, as if she understood what Megan was going through.

  Megan felt a shiver of fear run through her, and it startled her. She had expected upset and discomfort, but not fear.

  “You can’t read my mind too, can you?” she asked Zoe. Suddenly the reason for her fear became clear.

  If magic existed, and everyone who had it was psychic, then Megan’s privacy had been invaded all of her life—it had been anyway, if Kyle was to be believed, first by her sister Vivian, and now by her nephew—but that didn’t feel as invasive as having some woman she just met, some woman who claimed to love her brother, be able to know everything about her with just a single thought.

  “No,” Zoe said gently, “I can’t read minds. Kyle is a special boy.”

  She gave him a fond look.

  Megan glanced at her brother, who was staring at this woman with something like love. Megan had seen a similar expression on her brother’s face before—that adoration had been in his eyes when he had looked at his newborn son—but this was something else, something passionate, something not Travers.

  Or not the Travers she had grown up with.

  Travers and passion weren’t two words she had ever put together before.

  “You know,” Kyle was saying to Zoe, “I hate being called special. It makes me sound like there’s something wrong with me.”

  “I meant it as a compliment,” she said.

  “I know that,” Kyle said, but he still looked grumpy.

  And that was when the knot in Megan’s stomach loosened ever so slightly. Because if Zoe had really been psychic, she would have known that Kyle hated being called special. He also hated “weird” and “unusual” and “interesting.”

  The dog climbed into Kyle’s lap and inspected the table, his nose twitching. Megan looked at the food. The eggs had congealed, the waffles looked soggy, and the coffee was cold.

  She sighed and reached for the orange juice. Then she stopped, hand out, and contemplated something.

  “If you’re really magic,” she said to Zoe, “prove it. Revive my breakfast.”

  “Aunt Meg!” Kyle put a hand in front of the dog’s snout, preventing him from eating a strip of cold bacon off the plate. “You said you’d give her a chance.”

  �
�I am giving her a chance,” Megan said.

  “Revive it?” Travers said. “What are you asking, Meg?”

  Megan blinked at him. Then her stomach rumbled. The smell of fresh bacon always did that to her, even if she wasn’t hungry. Fresh bacon and fresh coffee—

  She looked down. The scrambled eggs were fluffy, with steam rising from them. The bacon wasn’t just hot, it was also crisp, which was exactly how she liked it. A new plate held sausages, cooked until they were shriveled and perfect. And the waffles looked like they had just come out of the waffle iron, little puffs of steam rising from their checkerboard surfaces.

  Megan raised her eyes slowly from the food to Zoe.

  Zoe smiled. “That’s what she meant, Trav.”

  He came to the table, put his arm around Zoe, and then glared at Megan. “Magic has a cost, you know. You just made her waste some on something trivial.”

  “Da-ad.” Kyle was clutching the dog, who was straining to reach the new plate of sausages. “Stop being mean to Aunt Megan.”

  “I didn’t know magic had costs,” Megan said. “I didn’t even know it existed until a few hours ago.”

  She took a bite of the eggs. They were extremely delicious, light and soft and warm, just the way she liked them.

  “This is really good,” she said. “How much do I owe you for this magic?”

  “That’s not the kind of cost I mean,” Travers snapped just as Zoe said, “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “So what’s the cost?” Megan kept her gaze on Zoe, deciding to pretend that Travers didn’t exist. She used to do this when they were kids, and it always irritated him.

  “People who use too much magic age quicker than those who use it sparingly,” Zoe said. “I don’t even think you cost me an age spot. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Age quicker? I thought you lived forever. Kyle said you were a hundred or more and that the Fates were thousands of years old.”

  “They are,” Zoe said, “and I don’t know if they age. But mages age. Just very, very slowly. Once we hit our magic, that is. Until then we age like mortals.”

  “Mortals.” The term sounded so derisive. “If you age—and presumably die—then how come you call us mortals?”

  “I didn’t call you a mortal,” Zoe said, and Travers gave her a sharp look. She ignored it. “It’s just a custom. I think mages used to believe they were immortal. But we’re not. Several thousand years is the longest I’ve heard of anyone making it. Most only go for about three or so, max. It’s tough to control your usage. I mean it’s really tempting to do things—”